Calculator Walk Years K - 1 (2)

An older person takes a young learner for a walk. They take a calculator with them to record numbers.

Preparation

• One calculator - better if it's not the one on your phone
• Write the title of this challenge and today's date on a fresh page in your maths journal.

• Penne or other tube pasta, or drinking straws or other suitable material to cut to about penne size
• Scissors, glue, paper or card to stick on to
• Perhaps other assorted craft materials and boxes

The Calculator

• Ask them what they can see? Record together in their journal.
• Ask what they can do with it? Record.
• Point to a digit and ask what they know about it. Record.
• Can you tell me anything else about the calculator.
• Suppose I write a number on the screen, but it's the wrong one. How can I make it go away?
• Can you write the number of people in our family?
• Can you write the number of pets we have?
• Can you write your age?
• Can you write my age?
• Write your favourite number on the screen. Now go and find that many ... (relevant objects).
• Write a number on the screen that might surprise me?

Invite the learner to come on a number hunt with you and bring the calculator ...so we can write some of the numbers we find.

The Walk

on walls in books on boxes on fences on signs on bins on the ground all around...

When you find them, write them on the calculator, talk about them, wonder why they are there, then move on. Could you make that number appear on the screen by using two other numbers? When it's time to go back to the start, pause to ask which was the favourite number they found. Discuss why and visit it again on the way back. Ask the learner to write it on their calculator again and try to remember it until ...we get back. It's a good idea to photograph it as well - memories fade and calculators can turn themselves off. Back home again, they draw the number in their journal and write (or you write for them) where it was found, why it is favoured and any other information about it.

Extension Johanna Buijs provides home schooling for her children. She created this extension for the older ones and shared it on her Instagram page. ...Hopefully more families will learn about all the wonderful activities you have there. This is what I have written for my extension. As the Mathematics Centre activity is aimed at young children I thought it would also be fun to have a number challenge for the older children, so... On the walk everyone has their own calculators. Even the older kids and of course you! The aim of the activity is to get as close to one hundred as you can. As you see a number enter it into your calculator. As you find more numbers you can add, subtract, divide or multiply. At the end of the walk who has the closest number to 100 is the winner!

Calculator Art

• Calculator screen digits are made by 'light bars'. Look closely at them to see how they are made. Use pasta tubes (or a substitute) and glue them on to paper/card to make a favourite digit, or their age, or house number or ... perhaps all the digits from zero (0) to nine (9).

  See below for examples from Johanna Buijs and her children who loved working on this activity in the January school holidays!

• Construct your own giant calculator out of assorted materials (like on Play School).
• Paint, draw, crayon, collage a picture of you using your calculator.
• ...or let us know what you think of and how it turned out.

Just Before You Finish

• Ask the learner to draw their face and make it show how they felt when ...we went walking with the calculator today.

Calculator Walk Gallery

Hi Doug I had planned to do this activity with my children when you first posted it but we only just got around to it. I've sent photos for your gallery of our pasta numbers. We used a spare white tile as a 'white board' base so we could write about our learning and large penne pasta for the numbers. Thanks again for all the great ideas! Jo

Maths At Home is a division of Mathematics Centre